“I wanted it to be like the ultimate anger, the ultimate passion, the ultimate orgasm. I wanted it to be like every emotion we’ve ever had. Because then it’s unconditional to the track. And love should be always unconditional.”
Roger Daltrey talking about the scream in “Love Reign O’er Me”.
Когда-то давно читала статью про The Who в Rolling Stones (хотя скорее про Таунсенда и Долтри). Какие-то зацепившие меня цитаты сохранила в телефоне в заметках, какие-то потеряла. Сейчас чистила память, а статью перечитывать и выискивать что-то еще сил совершенно нет, потому выкладываю самое полюбившееся. Статья еще и написан очень здорово, и сделана в виде диалогов интервьюера и поочередно Таунсенда и Долтри. Датируется статья концом двухтысячных, если мне не изменяет память.
Поразительно, The Who - невероятные циркачи и балагуры при поверхностном рассмотрении, но, мать их, на деле все четверо были, а те кто выжил и есть сейчас, абсолютно отчаявшиеся люди. Они порой вгоняют меня в такую муторную грусть, что проклянуть их хочется, хотя через минуту они вновь смешат меня и хохочут под ухом. Читать избранные цитаты.Townshend
'The dream that is at the heart of the Who's work is a dream that I think Roger and I have realised,' he says. 'That dream is ... It's like the Stones at Twickenham. They're a pub band, but they're up there in front of many thousands of people, and what happens is quite extraordinary. Even though I understand they didn't play their best ever concert at Twickenham, a bunch of people I know who were there say, "It didn't matter. What matters is that we were there together." As artists, we can affect gatherings of people. People lose themselves, and in the moment of losing themselves they then find themselves. They find a commonality, an innocence, and a sense of being which, I suppose, is close to a meditative state. When they walk away from it, they look back and think something special happened.'
(...)
I would just say, "Listen, I don't know if I could ever do what I did again." I sit and look at "My Generation" and "Won't Get Fooled Again" and I think, "How can I do that again?"'
You mean, you felt you can never better that?
'Yes, it was intuitive. And being intuitive is fucking difficult.'
(...)
And I would get these regular visits from Roger saying, "I want to do this, I want to do that," and I would say, "Listen, it's over. Fuck off." Well, I wouldn't say fuck off, but "I'm not your man". Watching him pretending to be who he was ... it was all just pathetic. I had very little sympathy for him. I thought he should really go back and be a builder. A woman said to me the other day, "But he couldn't let it go." I said, "Well, why not?" "Because he was fucking gorgeous!" I said, "Is that really what it's all about?" and she said, "There aren't very many gorgeous men in the world."
(...)
He thinks of another reason he broke up the band. 'I didn't want to be in fucking pain all the time. I didn't want to be so disdainful or so intellectual or so arrogant. I didn't want to be doing interviews with people saying [moany voice] "What's it like being old, and you said you wanted to die before you got old." I remember thinking, "Are these people vegetables or something?" '
Daltrey
He told me he came through it because he had you and Rachel.
'I really love him. I do have to deal with the madness of some of his schemes. He's a technomaniac. I don't like the internet. I don't like the world he lives in. I don't think we've created a better society from the internet. Virtual relationships - I can't deal with that.'
(...)
'Well, I feel very close to him,' Daltrey says. 'But we don't have to see each other all the time. It's a different closeness, and I really treasure it for that. The Who is the energy that exists between Pete and I, and that energy is increased by doing it separately. I don't care when people say we're not getting on - it's not fucking important. All that matters is what exists onstage and in our music. In that music is our relationship, is our love. I have such a deep love and respect for him, and that goes through all of it. He forgives all my foibles, and I forgive all his, and underneath all that I love him dearly.'
(...)
Daltrey then took the photographer and his publicist and me on a little tour of his grounds in his Land Rover. We passed a woman who keeps the hawks that keep his rabbits down. We passed several fishermen by the edge of the beautiful lakes which he had made. At a fishing lodge, we paused to pick sweet plums from a tree. 'Just think,' one of us said to Daltrey, 'those lakes that you built are now going to be part of the English landscape for ever.'
'Nah,' Daltrey said. 'Nothing lasts for ever. Nothing. We're just pushing dust around.'